Dr. Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UMR recently received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to support his work on improving the electric power grid.

The Career Award is NSF’s most prestigious award given to assistant professors in a tenure-track position. The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career development activities of those teacher-scholars who are to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.

Venayagamoorthy will receive $400,000 from the NSF over the course of five years to investigate a project in neural networks. The project, "Scalable Learning and Adaptation with Intelligent Techniques and Neural Networks for Reconfiguration and Survivability of Complex Systems," involves the use of intelligent techniques to operate the electric power grid optimally.

Venayagamoorthy was also promoted to a senior member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineering (SAIEE). To become a senior member of the SAIEE, one must have worked in the field of electrical engineering for more than 10 years and have shown significant performance during five of those years.

Venayagamoorthy joined UMR in May 2002. His main research interests include computational intelligence, power systems, control systems and evolvable hardware. Prior to his current positions, Venayagamoorthy was a senior lecturer in electronic engineering at the Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa.

He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University in Nigeria in 1994 and master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, in 1999 and 2002, respectively.